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ARC for review.

This was my first Tawni O'Dell book after her Oprah selection from years ago. I wasn't thrilled with that book (it was set in Appalachia, as is this one, and there were things about it that bothered me...but it's been so many years ago I'm not sure exactly why). This was...better.

First of all, quite a page-turner, and with the same dark, gothic feel as Gap Creek - based on these two books only I would say that O'Dell has a love/hate relationship with the region (and with sibling relationships, but that's another story). Here famous TV psychologist and talking head Sheridan Boyle heads home to deal with his ailing grandfather (the epitome of the "wise old man" character) and finds a murder that harkens back to the long-ago miners versus the establishment war which ended in an infamous hanging. While some of the characters are a bit one note (nearly all of them are perfectly wonderful or horribly awful with few shades of anything else) the underlying story is interesting (you might guess what is going to happen, but the specifics were well done), especially the details involving actual life in the coal mines (I wish there had been more of this). If this isn't great literature it's certainly an above-average beach read.